BETWEEN THE LINES

What passes for news at Salon

Joseph Farah is founder, editor and chief executive officer of WND. He is the author or co-author of 13 books that have sold more than 5 million copies, including his latest, "The Restitution of All Things: Israel, Christians, and the End of the Age." Before launching WND as the first independent online news outlet in 1997, he served as editor in chief of major market dailies including the legendary Sacramento Union.

Frankly, you don’t need to read much more than that. All the necessary details are right there for you.

It’s a shocker, isn’t it?

Phyllis Schlafly, this gifted lady who devoted much of her life to pro-American and pro-family activism, had – gasp! – domestic help.

Isn’t that just the height of hypocrisy?

I’m telling you, these guys at Salon are true watchdogs of freedom and liberty. How do they come up with scoops like this?

What? You mean, you don’t see anything wrong with people having domestic help? You mean, you see a qualitative difference between shoving your children into a government-subsidized day-care facility for seven or eight hours a day and raising them in your own home, while you pay someone with your own money to take out the trash?

Phyllis Schlafly, now 86, and the co-author of a new book called “The Flipside of Feminism,” has always been a target of the leftists. Before Sarah Palin ever picked up her first hunting rifle, my dear friend Phyllis was one of the most famous women in America – debating feminists, taking on campus radicals, standing up for tried-and-true American values and single-handedly leading the fight to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment.

She’s an attorney. She’s written more than 20 books that have sold millions. In fact, among conservatives, she is one of the most beloved women and treasured human resources alive today.

But, Salon wants you to know that she had domestic help. And that, they say, makes her a hypocrite.

Ridiculous. The left has been calling Phyllis Schlafly a hypocrite for 40 years. Why? Because she stood up for the righteousness of mothers staying home raising their own children, as she did. She didn’t argue against women having careers. She had one herself. She made choices and sacrifices – just like all rational human beings do.

Long ago, Gloria Steinem and her ilk were calling Schlafly a hypocrite because she was married, raised her children, obtained a law degree, wrote books, ran an activist organization and spoke her mind. That’s not hypocrisy. That’s accomplishment – something the left has never understood. Nor, apparently, have the journalists at Salon.

Pia de Solenni, an early feminist antagonist, wrote many years ago: “Schlafly’s discussion reveals a paradox. She was able to have it all: family and career. And she did it by fighting those who said they were trying to get it all for her. … Happiness resulted from being a wife and mother and working with her husband to reach their goals.”

Isn’t that absurd? Phyllis accomplished all this before there was a feminist movement. What they hated about her was that she disproved any need for feminism. Lots of American women like Phyllis balanced careers and family. They made responsible choices. What the feminists actually sought to do was to remove the choices and nationalize child rearing.

Now Salon is making the same ridiculous mistake.

To Salon’s faux journalists, anyone who believes parents should be the primary caregivers to their children but hires a housekeeper or a tutor or a babysitter is a hypocrite.

They can’t make any distinction between the way people allocate their own time and monetary resources within a family setting and the presumption that the state is better equipped to raise children than parents.

It’s mind-boggling.

I’m not sure I have ever witnessed such intellectual dishonesty.

Let me summarize and conclude: Phyllis Schlafly is an America heroine. Anyone who would call her a hypocrite doesn’t know her or the meaning of the word. And if you agree with me, buy her new book, “The Flipside of Feminism,” co-authored with her talented niece, Suzanne Venker, and proudly published by yours truly.